the ends justify the means
by malfoyforever
Summary: We all know that Sirius left home at the age of sixteen, but why did this happen? What was the final straw that pushed him over the edge? This is the story of two brothers, one who was slightly more jealous of the other, and of betrayal. This is Regulus' tale. Rated T for language, oneshot.


**Okay, I don't know what this is :P I haven't written anything in ages, I know, and the first coherent Harry Potter fic that I finish in a long time is angsty. Sue me.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned HP, the focus would be on Slytherins, not Gryffindors. Alas...**

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**the ends justify the means**

Regulus Black is skilled at taking what is not his and giving away nothing in return.

He sits on his bed, cross-legged, as he spreads the newspaper clippings around him in a black and white halo. They tell stories of destruction and of death, of pain and of necessary suffering to achieve honourable goals. The journalist writing the article always manages to convey the sheer horror of whatever tragedy he's told to cover, and Regulus always feels a little bit sorry for the murdered folks, but he pushes the feeling away. He will be a Death Eater soon – he's finished fourth year already – and there is no place for pity, from what he's heard, in his future profession.

He picks one of them up, a gruesome tale about decapitated Muggles lying on the threshold of a house standing under a fresh Dark Mark, and fans his face with it without regarding the article. It's hot and humid at Grimmauld Place in the summer. Mother never gets around to casting Cooling Charms. Regulus sometimes thinks his mother must be extremely insensitive to temperature changes if she does not die in the heat of their home during the summer. Then again, maybe she does cast charms, but on herself only. Both are highly probable.

While he thinks this, staring at the dusty green canopy of his bed, he hears two voices speaking in low tones in his brother's room. Curious, Regulus hops off his bed silently and creeps to the wall, where he presses his ear to the wall and listens. Immoral? No matter. Is he not a Slytherin?

"... I – I'm sorry, Sirius," says a hoarse voice softly. Regulus frowns. He's heard it before. Where? "I understand your feelings, and I have nothing against them, but..."

"You don't swing that way," finishes his brother flatly. The Slytherin hears him flop onto his bed before Sirius sighs loudly. "_Fine_, Remus."

Regulus freezes. His heart stops beating for a tiny, painful second. His head spins and his stomach lurches. "Merlin," he whispers, and he swears that his neck is turning bright red. Don't, don't, don't, he orders himself. Continue.

The other boy – Remus – apologises again. There's a long silence through the wall that the two boys must find agonising. Finally, cutting the tension, Sirius says tersely, "Listen. Just... forget about this, okay? It's fine if you don't like me. Not everyone's a poof, I guess."

"Don't call yourself that!"

The dark-haired boy laughs. "But I _am_ one, Moony. That's the bloody thing."

"Sirius..."

"Go home, Remus." Regulus hears his brother pull himself up from the bed. "Here's some Floo powder. Hurry – my parents will kill me if they find you here."

After some ineffective convincing, Sirius's guest leaves. The Slytherin sucks in a breath and hurries back onto his bed – softly, in spite of what he just heard, with his heart still pounding in his chest – when he sees his brother push open his bedroom door and disappear downstairs.

_Sirius..._

In spite of himself, Regulus feels a pang of sympathy for his older brother. He knows what he's going through, he knows all too well.

And it makes him even more determined to destroy Sirius for once and for all.

/

Regulus Black may seem like the perfect son, but he's not. He always wanted to be, but then third year came and everything changed.

When he was in third year, the Slytherin discovered that he does not like girls. He likes boys instead.

Mother and Father may not speak about queers very often, but Regulus somehow knows that they hate them as much as they hate Muggles and Mudbloods and anyone that is unfamiliar to them. For the first time, back in third year, he thought that he didn't like his parents very much.

But he still can't hate them. He can only hate himself for being how he is.

Why can't he change?

/

Regulus Black is a coward, so it takes him a week and several days to finally gather up the courage to tell the truth to his parents.

"Sirius?" he says casually, ignoring his pounding heart and the nausea that he's currently feeling, as his mother rants yet again about how much a disgrace his brother is to the House of Black. "Mother, I'll tell you something else about him – Sirius is a queer."

The room seems to spin. It's perhaps his guilt or his nervousness at being discovered or the fact that he's looking around the dinner table to look at his family's reactions. Mother's black eyes seem to be bulging out of her head, Father's mouth is open in a perfect O, and Sirius is still holding his head high – an observation that angers Regulus.

Why isn't he hanging his head in shame at being discovered? But, no, Sirius has always been the brave brother. He will be proud and courageous to the end because that is how he is. When Regulus does not hate his brother's guts, he admires him and his bold-headed obstinacy.

"Is that true, Sirius?" demands Father, his voice deadly calm.

"Why wouldn't it be? If little Regulus, who's always right, says I'm queer, then I must be, right?" Sirius is grinning. He is swallowing away a lump in his throat – Regulus mirrors him discreetly – but he is smiling. The Slytherin has never been so infuriated. "Oh. Are you angry, Father? I'm sorry for disrespecting you. Er, _not_."

Mother shoots up, the chair nearly falling back with the force of the action. She points a thin, yellow-nailed finger at her son. "Don't tell me you're one of them as well as a blood traitor, Sirius!" she screeches, and screeches even louder when her older son grins and nods slowly. "Blood traitor! Queer! _What else_? YOU'RE NOT MY SON ANYMORE, SIRIUS ORION BLACK! I WANT YOU TO GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

Regulus is silent, hoping his cheeks are not colouring, while he watches this confrontation. Father has resumed eating. There is the shadow of a smile on his face.

Sirius is grinning too, even though there are tears in his eyes that only his brother can see. But the Gryffindor, who is after all a bold lion, blinks them away quickly, and contents himself with a breezy half-smirk. "Give me half an hour to pack," is his eloquent response. "Then you'll never see me again."

"Go back to your – your kind," spits Mother, falling back into her chair and fanning herself. There is hatred, and only hatred, etched in the deep lines of her sallow face. Regulus wonders idly – because he has always been the loyal son, even though it's Sirius who is the Gryffindor – how a woman can so rapidly turn her back on the son that she has birthed and raised.

Sirius turns on his heel, giving a grin to his infuriated parents. Regulus looks up and the brothers' gazes meet. The Gryffindor's face hardens and he mouths one word.

Poof.

He knows. He has guessed. Regulus should have known.

You can't hide anything from Sirius Orion Black.

/

Regulus Black has always been too sharp for his brother, an unsubtle Gryffindor. He should have outsmarted Sirius, not the other way round.

Poof.

Poof!

_Poof. _

At night he tosses and turns in his bed, wondering when his brother will swoop in and take everything from him.

Get his revenge. And laugh.

/

Regulus Black has always been all-too-unwilling to deal with the consequences of a certain act when it does not go as planned. Sirius's outing is a good example for this.

On September 1st, he dreads seeing his brother at Platform 9 3/4, but Sirius is not there. He is nowhere to be found on the train also, though Regulus confesses that he did not exactly search long and large for him. When he sees him at the Welcoming Feast, though, his heart freezes in his chest.

But the Gryffindor doesn't seem to notice him, and after a while Regulus begins to make excuses. Perhaps Sirius has forgotten – though this is highly unlikely – or perhaps he does not care. Perhaps he has searched for an excuse to leave home for so long that he is actually _thankful_ for his brother's betrayal.

The Slytherin sees his brother laughing and playing pranks with his friends. Sirius is happy. He is not destroyed. He will never be destroyed.

Regulus mopes around, has a stomach perpetually twisted with dread of confrontation and guilt, and does not even find pleasure in learning Dark Magic anymore. Even Snape is worried – brooding, aloof Severus Snape who teaches him curses that will be useful later on – and asks the boy what is going on.

He shrugs it off. He is not going to make the same mistake that Sirius made with Remus Lupin.

Regulus can be the destroyer, but he will not be the destroyed.

/

Regulus Black believes his own lies a little too easily and forgets that the thing you fear comes for you when you least expect it.

He does not expect to be caught on the shoulder by his brother in the Restricted Section, at the far end of the library. "Let me go," he hisses as Sirius stares at him and gestures for him to sit with a grin on his face. "What do you want, Sirius?"

He tries, he really does, but he cannot keep the nervous quiver out of his voice.

"To talk to you, little brother." The Gryffindor snickers and smirks when Regulus glances around him suspiciously, his face riddled with anxiety. "Don't worry! I've cast _Muffliato_ all around us. No one will discover your little secret."

_Merlin, this is not happening..._

Regulus should have not allowed himself to relax after five months. He is a Slytherin, and this is the most basic lesson, ingrained into first years' minds if they have not yet learnt it: Be on guard at all times, even when you don't think you should be. He is failing his House now, too. He is letting down expectations at an alarming rate.

"You know, Regulus, I've thought long and hard about this. I'm not going to hex you, and I certainly don't want any apologies," Sirius tells his brother in one breath, twirling his wand in his fingers. "You're not sorry, aren't you?"

He swallows the lump in his throat – reminiscences – and says stonily, "That's right, I'm not."

It's coming at any moment now. Sirius will undo the spell and yell to the entire library that Regulus Black, present heir of the House of Black, is a faggot. Everyone will hear and he will be ruined. And Sirius will continue to be happy, guilt-free and carefree, because that's just how he is.

Instead of doing all of this, destroying his brother after he has attempted to destroy him, Sirius simply dismisses his words. "Why do you worry so much, dear brother?" he asks, as if he really cares about the answer. "Isn't it easier to simply disregard everything and live your own life, instead of living for our loving parents?"

Regulus gazes at him coldly. "You're just wasting my time, aren't you?"

The Gryffindor shrugs, mirth but also curiosity and pity in his eyes. "Yeah, kind of. But I'm curious too. Why? What's so good about being the average Black?"

Because it's easier, Regulus wants to say. Because it's easier to live a life that's already traced out for you than to live one that is wholly unknown. Because I'm a coward, not like you, and I don't do anything but betray people and envy them. Because I'm fucking useless at anything but following Mother and Father's every order.

But he doesn't, because he's a Slytherin and everything that he says could be held against him. He instead asks, "You're not going to tell?"

The answer is brief and curt: "No, I won't. I hate you, but I don't believe in outing. Is that all?"

"Yes. That's all."

The Slytherin turns on his heel, ironically imitating his brother walking out on their parents, and exits the library. His brother's words swirl into one big dark whirlpool in his mind. Once again, Regulus is a coward. Once again, Regulus disappoints his brother. Once again, Regulus is the obedient, mindless lapdog of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

/

Regulus Black is, essentially, a selfish and jealous creature.

He feels no guilt, when he thinks about it years later, for outing his brother because it protects him from suspicion. He feels no remorse for joining the Death Eaters because his life will be easy and his family will be spared from the Dark Lord's wrath. He feels nothing when he aims a curse towards his brother's chest during a fight against the Order of the Phoenix because it's not him who has been harmed and because Sirius is just another blood traitor to be extinguished.

And yet, when his life should have been good, Regulus continues to be jealous of his brother.

Sirius likes girls, he knows, even though he also likes blokes. But not him. He tiptoed into Sirius's room – he is that scared of setting off his mother – and stole a picture of a girl in a bikini a while back. The girl was pretty, but he could feel nothing when he looked at her. He tried again the next night, and the next, and the next, but nothing works to this day.

His brother, if he were interested in preserving the line in any way, could be attracted to a girl and marry her to have little pureblood babies. But not him. Regulus has never felt anything for a girl, and whenever he tries to be attracted to one, he thinks of endless evenings on the fringe of the Forbidden Forest spent practicing curses, and of potion fumes, and of smirks shared in the common room. He thinks of jealousy then too, because the one he loves is infatuated with a beautiful woman who reeks of fire and citrus shampoos.

But Regulus, being the egotistic prick he is, cannot bring himself to destroy his loved one even when he wants it the most, because that would entail breaking a part of himself.

/

Regulus Black is, at the end, a failed hero.

He drinks the poison, ignoring Kreacher's wails, and feels a terrible burning at the back of his throat. There is thirst, of course, a terrifying thirst that drives him mad – if he isn't mad already – and forces him to his knees. His house elf totters forward to help, but he holds up a hand. He has to do this. He has to quench the thirst by himself. He has to drink the water.

He bends down and scoops up some of the liquid. A bony hand reaches up and pulls him, pulls him, pulls him down-

Regulus chokes. The water finds its way into his lungs and burns him for a few agonising moments. His eyes are obscured by the murkiness of the water and his entire body is aching. The Inferius continues to drag him into the depths of the hellish lake, and Regulus takes these last moments to remember.

A brother. He had a brother. Sirius. They didn't always get along. He hated him, they hated each other. Maybe he loved him too.

His family. Mad Bella who takes after her father in the sanity department, forever the faithful servant of the Dark Lord. Kind Andromeda, another blood traitor, who left home at eighteen. Beautiful Narcissa, whose blue eyes shine with a lust for power and status. Sirius, of course, who is the only one free. And him, a regular coward who tried to make things right at the end.

The Slytherin House. His friends – were they ever his friends? – who will grieve a seemingly loyal Death Eater forevermore.

The Dark Lord. He wishes him good riddance.

The one he loved, and still loves even now as he dies. He hopes he will be fine.

In the next instant, as his head hits the bottom, Regulus Black is gone.

/

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